Eftychia Mylona & Irakleitos Souyioultzoglou
In 1933, the Greeks from Egypt and Sudan (Σύλλογος των εξ Αιγύπτου και Σουδάν Ελλήνων) founded their association in Athens. From its early years, the association collected objects from Egypt, and eventually became a custodian of memorabilia (photographs, documents, athletic trophies) of the once-flourishing Greek communities in the country. Over time, and as the collection expanded, its premises were transformed into a place of curated memory; entire walls are now covered with showcases, with separate compartments dedicated to a specific community in Egypt (Fig. 1). Within each, contents are carefully arranged to highlight historical transitions and cultural resilience: in the background, photographs that depict athletic activities and Greek clubs in Egypt serve as symbolic foundations of the contemporary diasporic identity. As the visitor’s gaze shifts to the foreground, it captures more recent memorabilia, which stand as links between past and present, and indicators of a persistent social milieu that resisted displacement.

Following Timothy Mitchell’s conceptualisation of the exhibition as a symbolic space that (re)produces meaning and stereotypes within the collective imaginary (Mitchell, 1988), photographs and sports memorabilia are here examined as constitutive elements of an ad hoc sociocultural setting that conveys the prevailing narrative of the Greek communities in Egypt.
In February 2024, the Athletic Association of Greeks from Egypt (Αθλητικός Σύλλογος Αιγυπτιωτών Ελλήνων – ΑΣΑΕ) and the Association of Greeks from Port Said and Port Fuad organised an exhibition dedicated to the communal life of Greeks in the cities of the Suez Canal. Well before its opening, a series of social media posts advertised the exhibition as an opportunity for Greeks who had spent their childhood in the region to reunite and rekindle nostalgic memories—particularly memories related to their involvement in athletic clubs and participation in sporting events. This nostalgic framing extended into the event itself: in his opening speech, the president of the association introduced the interpretive lens through which visitors were invited to experience the exhibition: its purpose, he stated, was to “showcase the vitality of the Greek community in the past, in cities that are now in the hands of the Egyptians.”
Indeed, as the visitors walked past the displays, the room filled with nostalgic sighs, enthusiastic exclamations, recalling of names, and narratives from childhoods once lived in Egypt. Clearly, the event fulfilled its aim: by placing together and carefully arranging objects invested with symbolic meaning, it turned realia into a “lieu de mémoire” (Nora, 1989) that, beyond its material substance, stands as a container of the community’s collective memory — which, in turn, serves as a common denominator of the community’s persistent and distinct identity (Fig. 2).

The exhibition adheres to a symbolic pattern of rendering space into a heterotopic representation of the, by now shuttered, Greek communal space in Egypt. The lounge of the Association of Greeks from Egypt (Σύνδεσμος Αιγυπτιωτών Ελλήνων – ΣΑΕ) —where Greek objects from Egypt and Egyptian handcrafted objects have been carefully arranged together — stands as another example of the imaginary reconstruction of ‘home’.
Much like in temporary exhibitions, sports memorabilia displayed across two walls of the large hall serve as identifiers of a long-standing tradition—one that first emerged ‘at home’ and continues in Greece. They demarcate material identities and the ways in which Greeks conceptualise and perform their post-diasporic heritage after their departure from Egypt (Fig. 3).

Sports constitute a symbolic space where discourses on nationhood and cultural identities intersect (Lichtenstein, 2015). For the Greeks in Egypt, such activities encompassed collective conceptualisations that defined the essence and the boundaries of Greekness in diaspora. Sports (along with other communal activities, such as scouting and school excursions) aimed to reinforce community bonds, played a central role in sustaining a distinct “Greek identity” (Ελληνική Κοινότητα Αλεξανδρείας, Λογοδοσία έτους 1965, 25-26), and became part of a strategy to counter the gradual “egyptianisation” of social life and the subsequent fear of assimilation.
The first sports clubs in Egypt emerged in the early 20th century (Jacob, 2011). The Egyptian Yacht Club in Alexandria was established in 1901, followed by the creation of the Egyptian Athletic Federation in 1910. Around the same time, Greeks began forming their own associations: the Nautical Club of Alexandria (1909), and later those in Cairo and Port Said (1927). The Greek Athletic Associations of Port Fuad (1932) and Port Said (1949) developed a strong presence in football and basketball, enriching the community’s sporting life.
The establishment of athletic clubs was considered as a critical step towards communal coherence, and was strongly supported by the community leadership. Accordingly, athletic successes were interpreted as a proof of the community’s vitality and evidence of virtues supposedly embedded in the community itself—discipline, dedication, and persistence in the face of hardship. Thus, sports memorabilia substantiated metaphors of moral and physical strength. The abolition of Capitulations (1937) and, subsequently, the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and the Arab–Israeli wars, placed foreign communities under a legal and social framework that stripped away their privileged status and gradually led to their displacement. After most Greeks left Egypt, sports memorabilia, as prominent symbols of achievement, were transported to Athens and housed in the associations they established there—the most prominent being the Hellenic Nautical Club of Greeks from Egypt (Ελληνικός Ναυτικός Όμιλος Αιγυπτιωτών – ΕΝΟΑ), and the Association of Greeks from Egypt.
As Anna Pechurina (2020, 67) observes, in the context of migration, objects play a vital role in (re)constructing and (re)inventing the feeling of being at home. Once removed from their original setting, use, and ownership, these so-called “diasporic objects” take on new layers of meaning and significance as they are re-situated within different social spaces. Therefore, sports memorabilia, as “victorious objects,” embody migrants’ connections to their communal heritage and distant homeland. They serve both as reminders of physical separation from these places and experiences (Pechurina), and as material instantiations of collective belonging that symbolically reproduce a sense of “home.”
In the sports clubs and associations founded in Greece, former athletes assumed new roles as trainers for younger generations, and new victories soon followed. Trophies and medals were conveniently placed and proudly displayed alongside those transported from Egypt. Their display constitutes a performative act of continuity, and reconstitutes communal life in a different social setting. These objects publicly affirm that the values and shared memories of the community were re-embedded in a new environment.
The replacement of diasporic objects into a new social setting and their blending with objects that do not share the same territorial or historical origin, contributes to the symbolic construction of a new “home,” through the creation of fresh layers of memory. By evoking collective memories and materialising a longstanding tradition of communal activities, the memorabilia stand as reminders of practices that forged a sense of belonging and a shared ethnic/social identity — recognisable both within and outside the boundaries of the community of Greeks from Egypt.
References
William C. Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940, Cairo: AUC, 2011.
Tatjana Lichtenstein, “‘An Athlete Like a Soldier Must Not Retreat’: Zionists, Sport, and Belonging in Interwar Czechoslovakia.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 34, no. 1, 2015, p. 1-26
Timothy Mitchell,Colonizing Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988
Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, no. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, 1989, p.7-24.
Anna Pechurina. “Researching identities through material possessions: The case of diasporic objects,” Current Sociology 68, no. 5, 2020, p. 669–683.
Ελληνική Κοινότητα Αλεξανδρείας. Λογοδοσία Έτους 1965. ELIA Archive.



































